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The heavily-hyped Warner Brothers super hero epic "Batman V. Superman:
Dawn of Justice" is one of the most heavily promoted films in years.
It's also one of the most expensive.
Variety estimates that the film's $250 million production budget plus
ancillary marketing costs will make it necessary for the movie to gross $800
worldwide just to break even. You read that right: $800 million. One
industry analyst says that anything less than a gross of $1 billion will be
considered a disappointment. Warner Brothers contends that those figures
don't take into consideration ancillary revenues from video and
merchandising. Fair enough, but if a film bombs, generally speaking, the
merchandise and video sales do, too. If you doubt it, how many people did
you see walking around with "Waterworld" or "Howard the Duck"
T shirts? Veteran screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film
industry "Nobody knows anything." That was decades ago and it's still
true today. The major studios are so devoid of any original ideas that they
can only keep upping the ante in hopes of milking the current passion for
big-budget comic book hero productions. It seems that if "Hamlet" were to be
brought to the big screen nowadays, the famed soliloquy would have to be
delivered by some guy in a cape and mask. Warner Brothers says that the fate
of the studio doesn't depend on "Batman vs. Superman", but the fact that
they would have to make such a statement indicates how high the stakes are
in terms of this film delivering the goods.

Short-sighted studio executives have always been suckers for mega-budget
would-be blockbusters. After the success of "Ben-Hur" and "The Ten
Commandments" in the late 1950s, studios churned out any number of
big-budget roadshow productions. Some worked out well ("The Sound of
Music", "Patton", "The Longest Day"), some did okay ("The Alamo",
"The Sand Pebbles") while many more lost substantial sums of money ("Mutiny
on the Bounty", "55 Days at Peking", "Reds", "Hello, Dolly!", "Cleopatra",
"Paint Your Wagon" and the notorious "Heaven's Gate"). That isn't
to say that most of these boxoffice bombs weren't good movies. In fact, some
were great movies, but from a sound business standpoint, their budgets
should never have been allowed to jeopardize the health of the entire
studio. When James Cameron's "Titanic" went over-budget and ended up
costing $200 million back in 1997, industry executives swore they would
never put themselves in such a precarious situation again. Guess what? The
film became a blockbuster and all caution was thrown to the wind. Before
long, directors who were deemed to be hot could get a virtual blank check if
they could convince studio bosses that they had the next "can't miss"
formula. That included Cameron, who ended up dropping $300 million on
"Avatar", which managed to denounce capitalist corporations even as
Cameron sought millions from the same entities to finance his
already-forgettable blockbuster. (Cameron had learned never to sink your own
money into your own production, regardless of how passionate you are about
it. It was a lesson learned the hard way by John Wayne on "The Alamo"
and Francis Ford Coppola on "Apocalypse Now".) However, the truth of
the matter is that the industry is relying on fewer and fewer blockbusters
to carry the baggage for other costly productions that either under-perform
or bomb outright. The jury is not yet in on "Batman v. Superman" but
how it stacks up in terms of quality isn't the most relevant factor. If the
movie doesn't open huge there will be at lot of pants wetting in the
corporate boardroom. (Word of mouth on the film is worrying. Apparently,
trailers aren't testing that well with the fan boy base the studio needs to
woo.)

Here's a suggestion: how about cutting back on productions that have budgets
equivalent to some nation's entire gross national product and get back in
the business of making modestly-budgeted movies that are designed to make
modest profits. Studios never bet the ranch on mid-range westerns, war
movies and spy flicks. Kate Hepburn, Jerry Lewis, Gary Cooper, Burt
Lancaster and Marilyn Monroe never starred in high risk blockbusters but
their films could always be relied upon to make a decent profit. In the rare
cases they did not, the losses were never very substantial. Remember when
classic sci-fi movies like "Planet of the Apes" could be completed on
relatively small budgets even with major talent involved? Today, insane
salaries for overpaid talent have driven the costs of films sky high even
before shooting even begins. This, despite the fact that unlike days of old,
there are precious few genuine "stars" still left in the industry. What
defines a star? Someone whose name on the marquee virtually guarantees a
film's success, regardless of the quality of a film. Try thinking of how
many actors today meet that criteria. The studios have learned nothing since
the era in which Fox bet its very future on the fate of one film:
"Cleopatra". It's a practice akin to the average person betting their
life savings on a sure bet at a casino. I dunno. I'm just a guy with a blue
collar background from Jersey City but I think I could run a studio
boardroom more responsibly than some of the folks who are now doing so-- and
so could you. Nobody knows anything.